Merle slammed his stump down onto the hotplate. Blood bubbled and spat. Flesh crackled and popped. Pain like a thousand shards of glass sliced the inside of his arm. He hammered the bench top with a white-knuckled fist. Every part of him was screaming to pull away, but he couldn’t. He needed to fucking live! To show them bastards what happens when you mess with a motherfucking Dixon!
His mind spun, his knees buckled, and he fell on his ass. Vision swirling, he stared at the charred, twisted stump that had once been his right hand. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“S- See, Ma? Told you bein’ a leftie had its perks. Fat bitch.” Merle spat and wiped his face. Breathing was hard, let alone standing. His legs trembled as he switched off the hotplate. “Wouldn’t want to leave you on, huh? That’s… that’s a damn fire hazard.” He leaned on the bench and drew a long, trembling breath.
A noxious smell infested the tiny, rotten kitchen, like Pa’s cooking, a tyre fire, and the underside of Cousin Ernie’s mattress all rolled into one. Cousin Ernie didn’t believe in soap. The smell clogged the back of his throat. Fucking hell, it smelt worse than the biters. It followed Merle out of the kitchen and into a living room-bedroom kind of thing smaller than the shittiest of shitty trailers. Did the cock-suckers in the city really live like this?
It was only after he’d rummaged through every drawer the place had to offer that he realised the smell was coming from him.
“Should probably bandage it…” Merle clenched his fists. Fists? They were still there, his right hand’s fingers. They flexed and curled like normal – he felt it in his wrist. “What the hell… What the fucking hell?! Damn it! God fucking dammit!” He kicked a pathetic excuse for a chest of drawers. It collapsed. “I’ll kill ‘em! All of ‘em! The Nigger, The Taco-Bender, The Chinaman, The Pig, The Bitch, that fucking kid with the sword, and all their little friends! Chain me to a roof?! Leave me to die?! They’re dead! DEAD!”
Merle revelled in his rage and trashed the place, kicking shit over and smashing shit with the heel of his boot. His heart pounded his head. His blood pumped. His mind soared. He was fucking King Kong and Godzilla. He was untouchable. But only for a moment. He was a Dixon and Dixons were smart as they come. There weren’t no time for fucking around.
First and foremost, he needed a weapon. Nothing fancy, just something to split skulls with.
All of the kitchen counter draws were opened or broken. The cabinets and fridge were barren. Someone had even ripped the fucking microwave out of the wall. Who the hell steals a microwave? Dust bunnies guarded the gaps underneath the counters and fridge.
Bingo.
Merle got down on hands and knees, pressed his cheek against the stained tiles, and swept away the dust bunnies. Something solid brushed his fingers. He squeezed his hand through the narrow gap and grasped a plastic handle between his index and middle finger. “Booyah,” he said as he recovered a butcher’s knife. “Your hidin’ spot might of fooled them other assholes, but you’re dealin’ with a Dixon, Knifey. Knifey? Nah, that’s a dumb name. Butchy? Butch. Yeah, Butch. That’s badass. Sounds like a pitbull or a rottweiler or some shit.”
Merle swiped Butch back and forth. She was heavy, but light enough to manoeuvre. Dirt-brown rust speckled the broad face of her blade and her handle was scarred with chips and cracks. She wasn’t pretty, not even close, but she’d do.
Another scavenge of all the draws and cabinets revealed nothing. Not even a crumb. The place had been picked clean.
“Fucking vultures,” said Merle as he tossed aside an empty draw.
With only Butch, the clothes on his back, and a single hand to his name, he shouldered open the tiny apartment’s paper-thin door.
The hall was abandoned, like everything else in the goddamn city. Trash bags piled beside apartment doors spilled all kinds of disgusting filth onto the matted, grey carpet; rotting food, month-old diapers, jumba juice, and yellow-green mush, not to mention a fuckton of squirming maggots and frantic flies. Mystery stains infected the carpet and peeling beige walls. Some dead bitch lay under the windowsills, naked as the day she was born. Fat maggots made a home out of the gunshot wound in the back of her head. Scratches and bite marks covered her back, thighs, and ass.
In his daze to find a working stove, Merle hadn’t noticed how fat her ass was. What kind of idiot kills an ass like that? Probably some kind of faggot. Or another bitch. A jealous one at that. Yeah, that made sense. No sane man would kill a piece of tail that fine when he could be her knight in shining armour instead.
“You’d fuck her wouldn’t you, Butch? Yeah you would! Sick bitch.”
Merle shot each and every door he passed a scowl. None of them had had a gas stove. Not one. No, these city folks were too good for gas. They cooked with electricity, all fancy-like. He’d scoured two entire fucking floors before he found the hot plate. Thank fuck one of these office drones liked camping or some shit.
There were no biters anywhere in the building. Well, not on the top two floors anyway. Or the roof. Blood loss was a hell of a drug. He wouldn’t have jumped over that alley if he’d snorted enough coke to kill an elephant. Not even that good blue shit could have got him to do something batshit insane.
Not that it mattered.
The moment his feet touched the roof, the sky exploded and drew all the biters away. Again. It wasn’t purple like before when they’d been entering the city. This time, a red lightning bolt hit a department store a few blocks over. His hair had stood on ends and the tips of his fingers tingled, including his ghost fingers. When the purple bolt struck the highway off in the distance, it rumbled like thunder. The red bolt shook the fucking earth. It sounded as if the sky would break in two, like the creaking of a falling tree but a million times louder.
Merle never wanted to feel that small again.
Needless to say, it drew all the biters away. Some of the dumb ones got confused and wandered off in the wrong direction, but most flowed like water through the alleys and street, screeching and hollering. Brown and black like rivers of shit. So, he’d jumped from rooftop to rooftop like fucking Batman or some shit for no goddamn reason.
He could still hear them. Fainter now. A stable faint sound that neither grew nor shrank. Some unlucky fucker must have been swarmed, holed up in a shit hole like he’d been not a few hours ago… at least, it felt like a few hours.
Merle stepped over the dead bitch with the fat ass and peered out the window. The sun peeked through the gap between the two buildings. Midday. So, not hours. One at most. Good, maybe those fuckers were still in the city.
“I’ll kill ‘em.” Merle kicked the dead bitch. “I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em I’ll kill ‘em!” He kicked the dead slut until she was black, blue and bleeding like the pig she was.
Fuck he needed to kill something! He needed to cave in some rotting fucker’s skull!
“COME ON!” shouted Merle as he sprinted down the halls. “I’M HERE! COME FUCKING GET ME! COME-”
A biter was standing in the intersection of four halls. Still as a statue, it watched the left hall. Leathery, rotten skin covered its bare legs. Its cock was rotten; twisted, tiny, and black like a leech.
“You die jerkin’ it or something?”
Blood oozed from five gashes across the side of its face.
“Hey! Are you fucking dumb? I’m here! Come get me!”
The centre gash cut through what was left of an ear.
“A deaf biter… great.”
Merle sighed and approached the biter. He’d have to pass it anyhow to get to the stairs, may as well put it down while he was there. The left hall was short, home to only two doors on each wall. A single window at its end showed Merle’s and the biter’s reflection.
The biter spun around.
“Shit!” Merle stepped back. The corpse swiped, missing him by a hair.
A guttural scream split the putrid air. The biter made a grab for him. Merle swatted away the grab with the face of Butch’s blade and kicked the corpse in the chest. It staggered, but did not fall. Spittle spluttered as it bellowed.
Merle stumbled backwards, forced into a retreat by a flurry of swipes and slashes. Yellow-green eyes honed in on him. It didn’t blink. It didn’t breathe. It just kept swiping and bellowing, on and on and on. Merle didn’t dare risk kicking it again and catching a scratch on the leg. Dixons were smarter than that. So, he turned tail and ran. A tactical retreat. He wasn’t no bitch. He cracked open an apartment door, slipped behind it, and peered out at the approaching biter.
“Come on come on come on,” muttered Merle as the biter staggered towards the door. Closer. Closer. Closer. When it was two paces away, Merle put all of his weight behind the door and rammed it into the biter. It shattered the dumb son of a bitch’s nose and threw him onto to his back, half-naked, cock out for the world to see.
“Been there, brother.” Merle leapt on top of the half-naked corpse and buried Butch through its brown. It’s head split open. Black blood pooled on the carpet, adding yet another mystery stain. Merle spat. “Horny bastard.”
***
Merle hurried to get out of the stairwell. It was plain. Plain walls. Plain stairs. Plain handrails. Everything in the fucking city was either disgusting or plain. He needed to be out in the woods, where there was colour and life and shit. And where it was goddamn quiet. That’s what Daryl loved about it so much; the quiet… Merle leapt down the last few stairs.
Corpses littered the lobby. Dead ones. Or, more dead? Whatever. Most of these ones had their clothes on, which would have been nice if the place didn’t look and smell like the inside of Cousin Ernie’s mouth. Cousin Ernie didn’t believe in toothpaste. God, I hope that filthy fucker didn’t make it.
As Merle picked through pockets and bags, he tried to ignore the noise. Upstairs, the wails of the dead were faint. Not in the lobby. The streets were empty as far as he could tell, but still the wails sounded as if they were right outside.
“Fucking hell on earth…” muttered Merle as he fished a pocketknife out of some dead geezer’s jacket. A weird pocketknife. It had all sorts of accessories; a little wrench, a screwdriver, a file, three types of knives, and a fucking corkscrew. When would you ever need a fucking corkscrew? He pocketed it anyway, but come on.
His head was buried in a suitcase big enough to sleep in when he noticed it. The wails were growing. Louder and louder and louder, until they roared like thunder. Biters clogged the windows, stealing the light of the sun. Darkness consumed the lobby. Hundreds of furious fists beat the door like war drums; a frantic sprinting pulse that shook the ground and rattled Merle’s bones.
Heart in his stomach, Merle whipped his head back and forth, searching for something to bar the doors. Anything. Anything at all! But, there was nothing. Only corpses and bags and more corpses.
The doors burst open. A giant of a man rushed inside and barred the doors behind him with his back. Rotten fingers squeezed through a small gap. The man threw all his weight against them. The doors clicked shut and a dozen fingers fell to the stained, grey carpet. The frantic pounding of the dead rattled the doors. The man clenched his jaw and cursed. Burns covered half his face; sick, black flesh pocked with oozing cracks and craters. Never in all his life did Merle Dixon think he’d ever meet anyone uglier than Merle Dixon. A shame too, ‘cause his axe and shield were a work of art.
The shield was painted yellow with three black dogs. Hand-painted too. It wasn’t some piece of trash, walmart ass, plastic bullshit. Each dog bore a set of beautiful, gnarly fangs. Fangs made to rip men limb from limb.
“How’d a freak like you pull something as pretty as her?”
“Are you mad, fool?” The freak snarled. “Get off your fucking arse and help!”
